Now A Major Motion Picture!

Yesterday on her Facebook page, Jordanna East shared a rant that we as writers often have. Why is it when a book becomes a movie, suddenly the cover has to be changed to feature the actors from said movie? Actually there is an answer: Money.

Here’s a true story for you.

Back in 2010/2011 before the release of the English version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the Millennium Trilogy (on which the film was based) was $7.99 at my local Barnes and Noble. Millennium was at the height of it’s popularity at the time and though everyone seemed to be obsessed I still wasn’t sure and so I never got around to purchasing them. Flash-forward, several months later the movies came out, I returned to Barnes and Noble, with the intention of purchasing the first book only to find a special movie tie-in cover and a special movie tie-in price. $9.99. Now two dollars isn’t as much as it could have been, and other films have made it much higher. The second and third books were about $12.99 and $14.99 (and that was just for an ebook which we can discuss later) but $2.00 just for this special cover? Why? In addition to the new cover featuring the actors one can almost always find the headline plastered over the cover: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!

I think one of the hopes (besides money) is that the film cover will entice movie watchers to pick up the books. Think about Twilight. How many of the obsessed fangirls read the book versus saw the movie? I’m betting a higher ratio saw the movie. From a marketing standpoint re-issuing the books to feature the movie posters is actually kind of genius. Interestingly and admittedly curiously, one of the few current books for whom this was never true has been the Harry Potter series. Whether this is Arthur A. Levine’s doing or a WB decision I’m not sure if anyone knows, but I will say this, I’m glad for it. Even for the 15th Anniversary covers they didn’t use the film movie poster for it. Why this is, I cannot say, and no matter how annoying you may find this practice, for both film and books it’s actually smart money.